Athletes on OnlyFans: It’s time for an adult conversation about funding
Should athletes be allowed to boost their meagre Lottery funding by performing on OnlyFans, like British canoeist Kurts Adams Rozentals? It’s time for a grown-up discussion, says Ed Warner.
How far would you go to fulfil your Olympic dream? Pre-dawn, pre-school training sessions; eschewing a student lifestyle to get a solid night’s sleep with no hangover; shift work at anti-social hours to cover your outgoings; selling edgy images of your sporty physique on OnlyFans?
Slalom canoeist Kurts Adams Rozentals has gone down the latter route. The result? A provisional suspension of his National Lottery funding from Paddle UK, the governing body for canoe, kayak and paddle board.
The 22-year-old has won silver medals at age group World and European championships. While his activity on OnlyFans is reviewed, however, he is ineligible for further international selection.
“The interim action is a neutral act designed to protect all parties and is not a disciplinary action… Interim action under the Athlete Disciplinary Policy is only taken where necessary and appropriate.”
Paddle UK
Had the athlete’s alleged misdemeanour been more conventional – doping or gambling, say – his case would have barely warranted an inch of national media coverage.
As it is, Rozentals found himself across all mainstream platforms last week, doubtless multiplying the clicks on his pay-to-view account that he claims has already racked him up a six figure income since it went live in January. Only weeks earlier, Paddle UK had confirmed his Lottery funding for LA28 at an initial £16,000 a year.
Titillating though this tale may be for those outside the day-to-day Olympic and Paralympic world, the real issue is not the morality divide in today’s society but the value our nation is prepared to attribute to medal success in sports without a viable, self-sustaining financial underpinning.
Uplifting though the Games may be when we see them on our screens every fourth summer, the reality for the vast majority of athletes – as well as the governing bodies that provide them with training infrastructure – is that only hardcore fans follow their efforts between editions. The result is scanty commercial opportunities and events with little or no meaningful prize money.
The Lottery funding system was designed to bridge this economic gap between the commitment necessary to be competitive on the global sporting stage and the relatively trivial rewards for most. Inflation, though, has relentlessly eaten away at the real value of individual athletes’ funding awards.
These grants are currently capped at a (tax-free) £28,000 a year, although most athletes receive lower sums. Eligibility is decided by virtue of each individual’s performance trajectory and assessed potential.
UK Sport, the administering agency, employs a means-testing overlay. If an athlete has income greater than £65,000 per annum they are ruled out of a cash award, although they retain all the ancillary support services the system offers such as coaching, sport science and medical.
For once, it is easy to see and sympathise with both sides of the argument. Paddle UK’s responsibilities extend across a wildly popular range of water sports, with paddleboarding to the fore. Future Olympians will spring from these mass pastimes, but financial resources cannot be subverted from one to support the other.
The governing body would doubtless love to see a lucrative global circuit that could enrich its elite squad, but that’s out of its hands and unlikely to magically appear any time soon. Last year’s International Canoe Federation Super Cup in China boasted £294,000 in total prize money. The most any single athlete took home from the event, though, was just £5,000.
All Olympic and Paralympic governing bodies face the same challenge, with the partial exceptions of athletics, triathlon and equestrian, plus of course the major professional sports for whom the Games are of secondary interest – think tennis, golf, rugby and football.
Nations worldwide, from democratic to totalitarian, fund elite athletes for various reasons, each of which comes back eventually to inspiring the public. It is no surprise, then, to find that UK Sport’s Lottery funding has a number of conditions around athlete behaviours. The system reserves the right, in effect, to choose its inspirational role models.
Kurts Adams Rozentals is clearly aware of the challenge that his own money-spinning modelling activity poses. Asked by Sky News about his mother’s reaction to his OnlyFans account he replied: “To be very honest she was crying, like the first week, non-stop.”
My small, unscientific straw poll within the sporting system in recent days revealed some sympathy with Rozentals – dependent on the nature of his OnlyFans content, which no-one admitted to having seen.
At heart this reflects a recognition of the practical constraints faced by athletes expected to be full-time professionals surviving purely on Lottery grants. I was reminded of one gold medalist who recently retired telling us – in a very friendly way – that we simply couldn’t afford to ensure they had enough income to support their family.
Spartan ideals can carry you only so far in sport. Daley Thompson’s revelation that he trained on Christmas Day because he knew his opponents wouldn’t still stands as a motif for the hard knocks school.
But Premier League footballers and IPL cricketers excel within pampered lifestyles. It’s the strivers lower down the ladder who endure tougher existences. At least these footballers and cricketers have genuine lands of plenty to aspire to, however, not the wealth mirage that shimmers before wannabe Olympians and Paralympians.
It is high time, then, that we had an adult conversation. Not about Kurt Adams Rozentals’ adult content, but about how to close the gap between the inspirational value we ascribe to our athletes and the actual funds that are currently provided to sustain them in pursuing their – and by extension our – dreams.
Code of silence
I’m all over watching football until the next league season begins – although if/when the Lionesses make the knock-out stage of the Euros, I guess I’ll relent.
The game’s desperation to become a year-round enterprise is unseemly. Manchester United’s much-derided tour to Asia, women’s World Sevens Football, pre-season mini-tournaments in the USA between Premier League teams, and Fifa’s Club World Cup gluttony. £10m for Real Madrid to secure early access to Trent Alexander-Arnold says it all.
Football’s ruling class may believe that the commercial value of its pinnacle assets is armour-plated, but I wouldn’t be so sure. Cricket’s calendar is a mess and has diluted the impact of its most prestigious competitions.
Would all sports give us a break please? Literally!
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com